Why Parliament Must Act on Judgment Debt

By Kwasi Gyan-Apenteng,

July 10, 2012

When future historians decide to look for a name for the year 2012 they may well decide to call it the Year of Judgment Debts; perhaps it may even be commemorated with a special statue alongside the monument to the victims of the May 9 disaster outside the Ohene Djan Stadium in Accra. Some might argue that the Year of Woyome would probably be more pointed and appropriate because by volume no one comes close to Mr. Alfred Agbesi Woyome in terms of headlines and broadcast mentions in the course of the year – so far. It is possible that even more penetrating judgment debt issues could hit the public domain before the year ends. The latest issue is a baffling albeit galloping one.

The story is simple, but in the Ghana of NDC-NPP duel-to-the-death power struggle nothing is simple. The NDC government under former President John Rawlings ordered a number of Galloper vehicles for district assemblies. Everyone agrees that this is the case. The vehicles arrived after that government had been replaced by the NPP led by former President John Kufuor. There is agreement there too, but that is where sweet mutual reason ends. We know that the NPP government did not take delivery of the Gallopers because they are still parked where they were more or less dumped. The company that imported the vehicles wants their money plus interest calculated at a very high rate.

The government wants to pay (some of) the money because it believes we owe the company. The NPP opposition says the government should not pay because there was no contract covering the deal, and in any case, according to the NPP, the vehicles were not up to the required quality standard. This more or less is the story. Always remember that paper is made out of trees so by the time this story runs is course and is replaced by the next “scandal” several trees would have died needlessly. I say needlessly because this really ought to be simple. If there is a contract, where is it and what does it say? That should settle it, but we know that it won’t because at the base of this is politics in its pure form, which is not a bad thing because this is what plural politics is all about.

However, we could also use politics in a broad sense to bring sanity to the judgment debt as a political sub-genus in its own right. This is my suggestion: Parliament should set up a public committee to investigate all judgment debt issues going back as far as claims can be traced and deliver a verdict that has credibility as its main attraction. Parliament carries the sovereign will of all of us and should act in the interest of the people and not in its various sectarian interests. Naturally, any such Parliamentary enquiry would probably be mired in the same NDC-NPP imbroglio which is the cause of so much inertia, but at least the basic facts can be established in public without too much fuss.

There is an aside to the Galloper issue that is really hilarious. Mr. Atta Akyea is an NPP MP, which means that by definition he is against paying any money to the company that imported the vehicles. He is also a lawyer and once represented the interest of the same company demanding money from the government. A letter written by Mr. Akyea demanding the money has been found and read several times on radio by government supporters as proof that, by association, the NPP tacitly or otherwise accepted the deal on the vehicles. Mr. Atta Akyea’s answer is a classic of the genre. “It is insulting to our good governance set-up that a letter from a lawyer should be accepted as the gospel truth and that the government should swallow it hook, line and sinker”, he is quoted to have said. This means that what lawyers say should not be taken literally or too seriously!

There will be more of such twists and turns while the issue is debated on radio rather than in an appropriate setting where facts can be ascertained on oath and sober reflection will replace political colouration at the end of the enquiry process. At the moment, judgment debt is part of the broad political tussle which has the unrelenting subtext of tit for tat in and out of government. Recently, in connection with this same discussion, the matter of the airplane which was bought by the Rawlings administration but never used by the Kufuor government came up, and the Flagstaff House riposte followed in ten seconds flat. This shows that unless such outstanding matters are cleared once and for all in a competent manner, once government changes hands, repudiation of existing or non-existing contracts will continue to pose difficulties for the country as a whole.

There is hope that the Presidential Transition Act might resolve some of such issues in the future, but that is in the future. At the moment we have several such issues taking up valuable government time and threatening to take huge sums away from paying for genuine development needs. Furthermore, the Transition Act will be effective to the extent that information will be provided to the in-coming government and in good time. It could also lead to a departing government rushing to close a deal before its potential repudiation by the new administration. Therefore, a parliamentary enquiry could not only clear the air now, but also establish ground rules and mutual trust that would make the Act more effective. In other words, childish as it may sound, we need the NDC and NPP to say, well, you have your plane, we have our Flagstaff. Let us shake hands and begin to act in the interest of Ghana. That can best be done under parliamentary aegis, - not on radio.

By Kwasi Gyan-Apenteng,

Journalist & Communications Consultant

Accra